A Case for Lyrics and How They Impact Our Emotions

Image credit: Noelle Westcott Photography

On August 28th, 2015, a few months before graduating with my Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) degree from the University of Pennsylvania, I walked into the office of James Pennebaker, a leading researcher in language and emotional experiences. I was excited and ready to talk about how words matter. Specifically, how lyrics, the words in a song, matter. I couldn’t wait for the conversation about his favorite lyrics, how artists could influence the world, and for all of the resources he could share that would support this hypothesis and set me up to start writing my capstone. I knew this was going to be good!

I pressed the record button on my iPhone and decided to get the obvious question out of the way first: “Do you think lyrics impact well-being?” This question, and its answer, felt obvious to me for two reasons. The first is that I am a singer-songwriter who not only performs and sings my own songs, but who has always listened to lyrics, written my own lyrics, and found comfort as the words on the radio influence my state of mind. The second reason that the impact of lyrics on well-being felt obvious to me was because I have worked with children in cancer treatment, end-of-life care, drug and alcohol recovery, and in juvenile detention centers to write and record their own songs. The topic of the songs and the impact they had on children and their caregivers is what led me to apply to the MAPP program.  

I knew how powerful a song could be to support emotional health and knew the answer to my capstone’s question: “Message in the music: Do lyrics influence well-being?” was, “Of course they do!” So imagine my shock when Pennebaker, a pioneer in the field of expressive writing and writing therapy, shrugged and said, “No, I don’t think lyrics influence well-being. In fact, I don’t really listen to lyrics.” 

And so began my capstone journey of trying to figure out if what I thought was obvious was, in fact, not obvious -- and maybe not even true at all. While I didn’t find countless studies confirming my hypothesis, I did find threads and overlapping research that makes me believe, now more than ever, that lyrics influence emotional health on an individual level and possibly a global one. 

Music and Words

One thing that can be said with confidence is that music is, and has always been, an integral part of any society. Try to imagine a world with no music: no first dances at weddings, no stereo or iPod to accompany your commute to work, no soundtrack supporting a movie, no stadium concerts or coffee shop serenades, and definitely no singing around a campfire. If it seems impossible to imagine, that is because we have never, in the documented history of humanity, been without music (Levitin, 2006). Music is ubiquitous; in any human society imaginable, music is most likely present (MacDonald et al., 2012), including every human gathering from celebration to grief and sporting events to weddings. Music accompanies (pun intended) events across cultures. Emotional response to music – both positive and negative – affects a large enough portion of the population that it might be harnessed as a public health intervention because music is so accessible (Västfjäll et al., 2012).  Victor Hugo said, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.” But music on its own is, for the most part, a combination of notes and spaces. What if the music has words? 

Enter lyrics. When I talk about lyrics, I am speaking of words in music. Considering this definition, it would be impossible to talk about lyrics without talking about music. Music and lyrics support each other and work together to co-create one experience, an experience that would not be the same with one aspect missing. Take the popular Beatles song, “Here Comes The Sun.” The light-hearted music matches the hopeful lyrics, “Here comes the sun and I say, it’s alright.” Would this song be the same if the music were in a minor key, dark and forbidding? Or if the lyrics were “and dark remains and I say, burn it down”? Maybe one has more influence than the other, but what we can say for sure is that music on its own has a dynamic ability to influence emotion (Bharucha et al., 2006; Clark, 2013; Juslin, 2001; Juslin, 2003; Levitin, 2007, & Västjäll et al., 2012).

Music isn’t the only art that influences well-being. The other half of the definition of lyrics – that is, words – also have been shown to influence our emotional state. The research of expressive writing has shown that basic writing for just 15 minutes a day can produce significant improvement in well-being by supporting and enhancing motivation, self-efficacy, flow, and self-regulation (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999). These studies focus on writing about your own experiences.  What influence do the words we read have on us? Studies have shown that reading certain classic novels can help counter depression “by increasing self-awareness and enhancing the ability to articulate profound issues of self and being.” (Billington, J, Dorwick, C, Robinson, J, Hamer, A, Williams, C., 2011).

Music with Words

The research shows that music and words can impact our emotional state. What can be said about the combination of music and words? This was the challenging part of my research. Lyrics are not studied as frequently as music, although they are often partners (Juslin, 2005). There have even been studies on the relationship between language and music and how music can bolster language through various avenues.  

The “OPERA” hypothesis proposes that, because speech shares networks with music, we can take advantage of neuroplasticity when five conditions are met. “These are: (1) Overlap: there is anatomical overlap in the brain networks that process an acoustic feature used in both music and speech (e.g., waveform periodicity, amplitude envelope), (2) Precision: music places higher demands on these shared networks than does speech, in terms of the precision of processing, (3) Emotion: the musical activities that engage this network elicit strong positive emotion, (4) Repetition: the musical activities that engage this network are frequently repeated, and (5) Attention: the musical activities that engage this network are associated with focused attention” (Patel, A.D., 2012). Patel’s OPERA hypothesis suggests that if we put words to music, they can bolster each other in ways they could not if they were considered separately from one another.

Music preference and engagement differs from person to person and most likely from season to season or perhaps from day to day. We know music and lyrics have been a part of every society (Levitin, 2006). From Gregorian chants, used to memorize and communicate religious passages and psalms (Apel, 1958) to protest songs of the civil rights movement in the early sixties (Rodnitsky, 1969). It is undeniable that the majority of songs on popular radio, nominated for Grammys, and the average music collection have words that accompany the music. These words, or lyrics, add something powerful to the songs we listen to. The field is rich with possibility for research on lyrics. Yip Harburg, a popular American song lyricist most well known for “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” described his view on lyrics: “Words make you think... music makes you feel...but a song makes you feel thoughts” (Alonso, 2012, Preface section, para. 12).

Image courtesy of the author

The Whole Picture

Allow me to pause the academic talk for a paragraph and speak from my experience as a songwriter, a facilitator of songwriting for others, a professional performer, and somebody who loves lyrics. My experience of Harburg’s thoughts is that the synergy of words accompanied by music can take a feeling and slow it down just a little, so that I have permission to create space in this moment to truly feel. This is what I think he means by “feeling thoughts” – an invitation for mindfulness and creating space for what is. The space between notes and words could allow us to feel on a deeper level eliciting a connection to ourselves, perhaps in a way we couldn’t articulate on our own. I know I have used lyrics in this way. Experiencing lyrics helps me feel present in a wonderful moment by amplifying feelings of joy or peace. On the other hand, lyrics have helped me feel less alone in my pain, easing my loneliness, because someone somewhere has written these words and understood how it felt. Lyrics make me feel better connected, not only to myself but to humanity at large. From hymns to anthems and from love songs to songs of loss, we can see ourselves in lyrics all while feeling part of something larger. The individual and the collective are present in the very same moment, held together by words and notes. It is so simple and so profound.

But, to my songwriter-heart’s surprise, not everyone listens to lyrics. Even somebody like James Pennebaker, who studies words for a living, claims to not pay attention to words in a song. I have to admit, I don’t always listen to lyrics either. So, do they impact us even when we aren’t listening? No studies have been done on this yet. The study would have to pull from subliminal messaging, music, linguistics, comprehension, and emotion measurement. All of those are complex on their own but add them together, and it’s one complicated study ripe for grounded theory qualitative research methods to shine a light on the answer. I think this approach might be best suited for studying the impact of lyrics because it is going right to the source, the person’s perceived experience.

There has been increasing interest in lyrics and how humanity interacts with them since I wrote my capstone in 2015. For example, most popular streaming platforms now include lyrics in their streaming service. Various data analyzing companies do light-hearted and revealing measurements on lyrics. And one of my favorites, a social justice organization called Playing For Change, utilized unifying lyrics from the song “Stand By Me” by recording everyday musicians across the world in one moving video.

So – do lyrics influence well-being? After a few months I found what I was looking for… an unsatisfactory answer to a really good question. What we can fairly assume is that the way in which we engage with music and lyrics could impact our emotional health. In future articles, I plan to explore how we can use lyrics for our own well-being on an individual level; how artists and the music industry can influence us – for better or for worse; and how lyrics can have a global impact on well-being, perhaps even a key to achieving Dr. Martin Seligman’s goal for 51% of the world’s population to be flourishing by 2051.

Out of curiosity, I emailed Pennebaker six years after our initial visit to see if he still felt the same about lyrics. Before I could even ask the question about lyrics and well-being, he informed me that he bought a ukulele over the pandemic and started writing songs, lyrics and all. Stay tuned for his updated answer.

References

Alonso, H. (2012). Yip Harburg legendary lyricist and human rights activist. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.

Apel, W. (1958). Gregorian chant. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bharucha, J. J., Curtis, M., & Paroo, K. (2006). Varieties of musical experience. Cognition, 100, 131-172.

Billington, J., Dorwick, C., Robinson, J., Hamer, A., & Williams, C. An Investigation into the Therapeutic Benefits of Reading in Relation to Depression and Well-Being. Liverpool: The Reader Organization, 2011.

Clark, S., & Giacomantonio, S. (2013). Music preferences and empathy: Toward predicting prosocial behavior. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 177-186.

Juslin, P. N. (2005). From mimesis to catharsis: Expression, perception, and induction of emotion in music. In D. Miell, R. MacDonald & D. J. Hargreaves (Eds)., Musical communication (pp-115). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Juslin, N., & Laukka, P. (2003). Communication of emotions in the vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same code? Psychological Bulletin, 129, 770-814.

Juslin, N., & Sloboda, J. (2001). Music and emotion: Theory and research music and emotion: Theory and research (pp. viii, 487). New York: Oxford University Press.

Levitin, D. (2006). This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession. New York, N.Y.: Dutton.

MacDonald, R., Kreutz, G., & Mitchell, L. (2012). What is music, health and wellbeing and why is it important. In Music, Health, and Wellbeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Patel, A. D. (2012). The OPERA hypothesis: Assumptions and clarifications. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1252, 124–128. 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06426.x

Pennebaker, J., & Seagal, J. (1999). Forming a story: The health benefits of narrative. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1243-1254.

Rodnitsky, J. (1969). The evolution of the American protest song. Journal of Popular Culture, 3, 35-45.

Västfjäll, D., Juslin, P. N., & Hartig, T. (2012). Music, subjective wellbeing, and health: The role of everyday emotions. In R. MacDonald, G. Kreutz, & L. Mitchell (Eds.), Music, health, and wellbeing (pp. 405-423). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tricia Fox Ransom is a singer-songwriter, recording artist, and Master of Applied Positive Psychology graduate from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a dual citizen with the United States and the United Kingdom. With over four years of experience facilitating one-on-one and group songwriting sessions that foster a sense of self-worth and catharsis, Tricia is a thought leader on lyrics and well-being. Tricia has traveled domestically and internationally as a singer-songwriter of original music. Her latest album, The Gathering, can be found anywhere you stream music. Tricia currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and their two children.